Nothing Is What It Seems
by Sashet
Summary: The events of Utopia as seen by the 'Professor' the Doctor and the Master.  Tenth Doctor. One shot


Authors Notes:

The views of the main protaganists to the events of Utopia. It doesn't add to what we saw or give any great insights into what the three (or should that really be two?) main characters think, but I still just had to write it down.

Sorry if you agree with Dr D who said it was dull!

Nothing Is What it Seems

The 'Professor'

There are three things that I thought I knew for certain:

I have always had the drums in my head.

I have always had a broken pocket watch

Nobody ever chooses to come to the end of the universe

All of those things are no longer true.

Somebody came to the end of the universe, this desperate place filled with lost souls all of whom are looking to me to save them and I don't know if I can. I don't know if he actually MEANT to come here but here is where he has found himself.

He is not alone either; he has two others who travel with him, a man and a young woman. I sense that all has not been well between the men and I wonder if it was over the woman, she seems to have a fondness for the stranger that he is unaware of. It isn't my business but after so many years of the same faces and the same emotions these three are like a breath of fresh air – another thing I have long forgotten!

He says he is the Doctor – but won't say what of. Nobody is a Doctor of nothing, although I am a Professor of nothing so I should not judge. When he comes near me the drums in my head seem to get louder as if they are trying to tell me something. It almost sounds like words but the pain just stops me in my tracks, I am not a young man anymore.

The Doctor says he knows how to power my rocket, how to take all the people to Utopia, to the life they have believed must be so much better than the life they live now. He says a lot of things I don't understand but I do what I can to help and when he asks for us to find his blue box I hope with all my might that the Futurekind do not find it first.

They do not and now it is here in my laboratory an unremarkable wooden box, not large, not impressive but it seems to be important to the Doctor. When I am close to the blue box I feel like it is giving off energy that only I can feel, like it is reaching out to me. Like it 'knows' me. But how can it do any of these things – it is just a box.

We are in the laboratory listening to the Doctor and his friend as they try to help the people of this world. They may not know that we are listening and if they do it doesn't stop them from talking about strange things, about how a girl, that I think from their voices they both may have loved, gave one eternal life and then was lost to them both. They talk of time travel, something of which I heard stories many years ago when I was a boy. Their conversation makes me sad, sad for their losses and sad maybe for mine too, if time travel had been possible then where might we be now?

All this talk of time reminds me of my watch and I feel a need to see it and to hold it. It is the same as always, old and broken. The cover engraved with symbols and pictures that I have never seen anywhere else and that mean nothing to me. The girl is fascinated by my watch as if she has seen it before, but our paths have never crossed and so she can not have done. The laws of everything I understand would say the chances of there being another watch like mine in the whole universe must be so small as to be virtually incalculable.

She stared at my watch and ran to her friends like she had seen the devil himself. Now I am alone with my broken watch and the drums in my head. The drums are as loud as I have ever heard them and, as I turn the watch in my hand, they finally form the words that they have for so many, many years being trying to speak.

"Open me you human fool. Open the light and summon me and receive my majesty. Destroy him and you will give your power to me."

I do not understand the words but I feel them to be right, to be something that I must do. Why I have never heard the watch before is just another mystery to be left in this place of no hope. Maybe the watch and the Doctor and the blue box and I are all linked. There is an insistence in the air now an urgency that seems to emanate from the watch itself and I can no longer just stand and look I must do as I am told. I must open the watch and see if it holds any secrets or it is just a broken watch and I am just a crazy old man.

I open the watch and look into its depths and hear its words and I am not a crazy old man in fact I am not a man at all. Now I know that the Professor was just an invention, a place for me to hide until it was my time to rise again.

I am a Time Lord

The Doctor

Martha is jabbering on about the Professor and I really need her not to be, these people need me and I need to concentrate or all I have done will be for nothing and they will remain stuck here in hell until the end of their lives. I won't let that happen.

Wait...what did she just say?

The Professor has a watch like mine….that CAN'T be… it just can't. So to be sure I ask her again and again she tells me that the Professor has a watch JUST LIKE MINE. Only we both know that it isn't just a watch, it's a receptacle, a hiding place if you like for all the things that make us Time Lords.. our souls I suppose. Only Time Lords have watches like these or should that be had watches as there are none of us left now… none it would seem but us two.

Jack is saying that it is a good thing that I'm not the last Time Lord but my mind is a whirl and I hardly register his words or my answer.

"Depends on which one"

Unwittingly Martha has blown away the perception filter and he can see the watch for what it truly is. As soon as he opens the watch my worst fear is confirmed. It isn't just another Time Lord it is him, my nemesis throughout all of time and space.

The Face of Bo had been right, I wasn't alone but I think that maybe there was always a part of me that hoped that somewhere in the vastness of all the galaxies there was a Time Lord who escaped the death I brought to my race. I just didn't want it to be him, so I chose to put my hope away and be the last Time Lord.

I can feel him now growing more powerful as he destroys the persona of the Professor, taking that man's life force to give him a rebirth that I fear will be a bigger danger to the Universe than even I can comprehend.

But things are different now – there are no other Time Lords – I know that with a certainty that I never had before. There are just us two, and deep down I always knew that for the final battle it could only ever be us two. Maybe I can talk to him, maybe all these years of hiding as a human have changed him, like John Smith changed a part of me, we should be brothers and not enemies. I have to try.

The humans from this place are safe now, on their journey to a better life and I wish them well. This race has a tendency to survive and I have no reason to believe that will change. So I wish them a brave new future and turn to face my own.

Only now we are trapped and time is against us. For every second that I delay he will grow stronger and my chances to reason with him will diminish. Suddenly we are free and am I running to him, leaving the others to trail in my wake. They don't really know what I am doing or why and I have no time to explain. I know that Jack will look after Martha and if I need him to he will look after me too.

In the laboratory the professor's assistant lies dying, he has claimed his first victim although I am sure she will not be the last. He is hurt and takes refuge in MY Tardis, locking me out! There is nothing I can do to get inside, she will fight him for me, but he will win eventually and she will take him where he demands.

"I'm begging you – everything's changed. It's only the two of us. We're the only ones left. Just let me in!" My words are screamed at him, a last desperate attempt to reason with him. He doesn't know that all of the other Time Lords are long gone and by my doing. I got us into a Time War from which there could be no winner.

I feel a surge through my mind as he uses my Tardis to give himself a new form. Now I know that reason and logic won't work, he has become the Master.

He is gloating at me now. Letting me know that he has returned and once again we are enemies. He thinks that he will leave me here at the end of the Universe, trapped with no means of escape until all those around me die and I am left completely alone. I hear Martha say that she knows his voice and that makes no sense. I don't question her now - if he gets away I may have all the time in the world to ask her what she meant. I do realise though that if she knows his voice there is only one place he can go…to the planet that since the demise of Gallifrey I have come to consider as the nearest thing to a home that I have. Earth.

"I'm asking you, really, properly, just stop, just think." It is last effort at reason one I know is futile

His voice is like ice "Use my name."

"Master" the word burns through me as I speak it and then I say "I'm sorry."

Sorry for what I'm not sure I have so many things to be sorry for.

Sorry I ever came to the end of the Universe

Sorry for Jack, trapped forever in a body that can not die.

Sorry for Rose lost to me forever along with a piece of my heart that will never mend

Sorry for Martha and the inhabitants of Earth for I fear I have unleashed on them something worse than they could ever imagine

Sorry for all those lives lost in the time war.

Sorry for the Professor, a man who never was who he thought he was.

Sorry even for the last two Time Lords because one or both of us will die in the battle for the Earth.

It is and always was our destiny.

Then he is gone and my Tardis with him and we are trapped on this world with the Futurekind baying at the door for our blood and no one to help us.

The Master

The drums make words and the words make sense. Thanks to the girl I can see the watch, see it for what it really is… it is me, my soul. Hidden for many, many years away from everybody and everything here at the end of the Universe I have existed in this watch.

Now I exist in the flesh once more, old and decaying though it may be it and with every passing second my essence replaces that of the old man until he ceases to be and I, the Master am once more whole.

I can see and feel through the watch that there is another like me here and I know who it will be. The Doctor, he stalks me through time and space and it is inevitable that we would meet again.

He will try to stop me he always does and yet I am still here at the end of time. I believe though that our next battle will be our last.

The professor's assistant tries to stop me and fails. I am the Master, I am reborn and soon I will be stronger and more powerful than I have ever been and then nobody, not even the do-goody Doctor will be able to resist me.

I feel the life force of the Doctor's Tardis and know that she is my way off this world. She is tuned to the Doctor's rhythms but my strength will rule her, eventually. Now I need time, so I let the Futurekind in, they will keep the Doctor and his companions busy until it is too late.

Suddenly I am in pain, more pain almost than I can bear. I have been shot and although I am the Master I am not yet as strong as I need to be. I stumble into the Tardis just as they arrive, the baying hounds of hell hot on their heels. I'm safe though and even the Doctor and his precious, if somewhat overused in my opinion, sonic screwdriver cannot gain him entry to his own Tardis now. If I wasn't in such pain I would enjoy the irony of my actions.

Regeneration has changed the way the Doctor looks and it will be my saviour too. His Tardis will give me a new body and then I will rule as nobody has ever ruled before. The pain of the regeneration passes quickly and I feel young and virile and able to do anything I choose.

I can hear him outside the door pleading with me not to do what I have to. It is a nice sound, the sound of the Doctor begging, I think I shall make him do that again before I kill him.

"Use my name" I demand of him knowing how he will hate to do so. He acquiesces with remarkable speed and then apologises. For what I don't know yet nor do I really care I am just saddened that he seems to have no stomach for this fight.

Still when my plans unfold he will have to fight, stomach or not for I will hit him where it most hurts, the planet and the people he cares the most about. He has lived with them and now he will die for them or with them. Either way it doesn't matter to me.

Set a course for Earth and let battle commence.


End file.
